


Avengers Family Ficlets

by elwenyere



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Avengers Family, Avengers Tower, But mostly fluff, Ceiling Vent Clint Barton, Domestic Avengers, Fluff and Angst, Holidays, Hurt/Comfort, Idiots in Love, M/M, Team Feels
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-04
Updated: 2020-12-31
Packaged: 2021-03-09 01:33:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 8,548
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27376516
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elwenyere/pseuds/elwenyere
Summary: “You built a neural network that analyzes squash,” Bruce said flatly, “and you attached it to a laser.”A collection of short stories set in the extended Domestic Avengers Universe.Chapter 1, "Decorative Gourd Season": the Avengers' pumpkin-carving contest is very competitiveChapter 2, "The Wait": fic for surviving the long November 3rdChapter 3, "The Last Door": Tony gets hurt, and Steve has a lot of feelings about itChapter 4, "Call My Bluff": a getting together fic, with bonus Avengers strip pokerChapter 5, "A Very Small Grease Fire (and Other Human Disasters)": pre-getting-together Thanksgiving fluff with minor Hurt!Steve angstChapter 6, "Deck the Halls": the Avengers make their own holiday decorations, and it goes about as well as you would expectChapter 7, "Old Acquaintance": it's New Year's Eve, and the Avengers get by with a little help from the team (and tater tots)
Relationships: Steve Rogers/Tony Stark
Comments: 87
Kudos: 155





	1. Decorative Gourd Season

**Author's Note:**

> I started writing some ficlets on Tumblr as a way to share occasional feels (and special-occasion feels) with the fandom, and it has turned into this collection of short stories, all of which exist in an Avengers Tower/Big-2012-Energy universe. Chapters are not chronological and can be read in any order, and short descriptions of each chapter are included in the summary. Thank you for reading and sharing little worlds together!

With each successive year, the Avengers pumpkin-carving contests had gotten increasingly competitive. Tony supposed he should have seen it coming, really, given the imbalance between their team members’ fine motor skills (literally lethal) and their sense of reasonable perspective (practically incompatible with civilian life). Sure, Thor’s attention usually wandered fairly early in the game, from scooping out seeds to refilling everyone’s beer (the man was a hopeless sucker for pumpkin stout). But Steve was an artist, Bruce worked with delicate lab equipment all day, Clint could bulls-eye a gourd from the length of a football field, and Natasha was like a Renaissance sculptor with a blade.

This year, however, Tony was going to win.

“You built a neural network that analyzes squash,” Bruce said flatly, “and you attached it to a laser.”

“I know, right?” Tony grinned, setting his new bot on the kitchen table triumphantly. “It scans the pumpkin wall for structural integrity and irregularities in surface texture, and then it matches the results against a database of classic and contemporary art.”

“That’s cheating,” Clint protested, waving the arrow he’d just been using to pick off the marshmallows he’d lined up across the kitchen island. “We put electricity on the ‘forbidden items’ list after Thor fried half our pumpkins into a pulp trying to carve his with Mjolnir.”

“My apologies again, friends,” Thor beamed at them, tipping an extra pour of New Holland Ichabod into Bruce’s glass. “But the resulting explosion was quite spectacular.”

“Luckily, Barton, little HALL-O here is solar-powered,” Tony said, patting the bot, which swiveled one if its laser-equipped arms toward him in response. “So you can all suck it, because tonight I’m going to be drinking the sweet apple cider of victory.”

Clint gave him the finger, and Natasha rolled her eyes. But Steve hummed non-committally in a way that sent off an instant warning bell in Tony’s mind.

“What, Captain Sure-of-Himself, you think you can out-carve a laser trained on the joint collections of the Louvre, the Whitney, and the Shanghai Museum?” Tony asked his boyfriend, eyes narrowing at the smug little twist of Steve’s lips.

“Oh no, Tony,” Steve said seriously, already slicing precise lines down his pumpkin’s surface. “I’m sure I couldn’t possibly create anything as elaborate as that.”

“Then why,” Tony gritted out, “are you smirking?”

“Let’s just say I think I’ve got a shot at the popular vote,” Steve replied affably. And then the bastard _winked_.

Well, that was absolutely not going to stand. Years earlier, when he and Steve had first started dating, Tony might have succumbed to his weak spot for Steve’s sassy moods. But he had spent weeks preparing for this coup. He whirled back toward his pumpkin, muttering to himself as he got HALL-O set up to go. He ignored the sly looks Natasha was casting his way every time she peeked over at Steve’s pumpkin. He didn’t even acknowledge Thor’s attempts to push a glass of beer his way: Thor’s strategy had become increasingly dependent on getting other people drunk, and Tony was not going to allow any distractions to come between him and the prize (a cardboard crown that read ~~Burger~~ Pumpkin King).

By the time everyone had finished, Tony was already bouncing impatiently on the balls of his feet, a perfect rendering of Caravaggio’s “The Calling of Saint Matthew” etched into his pumpkin.

“All right, losers,” Tony said. “Let’s see the runners up.”

Bruce had carved a meteor shower illuminated with candlelight; Natasha a delicately abstract series of flickering ballerinas; Clint a flock of birds that seemed to wink in and out of flight as the candle guttered; and Thor a somewhat lumpy Jane (again).

Steve held his pumpkin back for last, frowning at it theatrically.

“I don’t know, Tony,” he muttered, his brows knitted together. “I tried my best.”

“Will you just pony up, Rogers?” Tony growled, biting the side of his cheek to keep back the grin that threatened to take over his face whenever Steve put on his “aww shucks” act.

“Why don’t we let you two work this out while we get the movies ready for later?” Natasha said, standing up and giving Thor a firm pat on the shoulder.

“But I want to see!” Clint whined, and Natasha pinched him on the suprascapular nerve. “Oh fuck, Nat! Fine! Jesus. But this means we’re watching _Corpse Bride_!”

“Steve,” Tony said, as the other Avengers filed out of the kitchen. “Why are our friends leaving us alone with the pumpkins?”

Some actual nervousness seemed to have seeped into Steve’s demeanor. His shoulders had bunched closer to his ears, and his hands were hovering near the sides of his pumpkin. Finally he took a deep breath.

“Tell me what you think, Tony,” he said, and he turned the jack-o-lantern toward him.

In the corner were the cartoony outlines of Iron Man carrying a shield-wielding Captain America. The level of detail was probably pretty impressive, but Tony didn’t notice any of it, because in the center of the pumpkin – in soft, sloping letters – Steve had carved, “will you marry me?”

“Shit,” Tony swore, eyes darting to the spot where Steve had started to sink to one knee. Steve looked up at him with a small, hopeful smile, and Tony reached out to grab his hands and press Steve’s knuckles to his lips. Tony’s hands were shaking, but so were Steve’s, and the smile on Steve’s face was brightening as he held Tony’s eyes.

“You win.”


	2. The Wait

No one had ever accused Tony Stark of being too patient. So when the team had to wait a full twenty-four hours for news about whether their latest mission had been a success, it was no surprise to anyone who knew him that Tony’s response was not what they might call “chill.”

“Hey,” Tony said, poking at Steve’s shoulder as Steve tried to concentrate on the movie the team had chosen, “you’re really strong, right? But also, like, precise. I bet if you hit me on the head with this remote in just the right way…”

“Tony, for the twentieth time, I am not knocking you out until the news comes,” Steve replied patiently.

It had been a hard mission. They’d prepared for it for what felt like months, only to end up with everything stacked against them that possibly could be. Sitting and waiting to learn the results, Tony felt like someone had turned his body into a tuning fork for anxiety.

He knew that Steve felt the nerves too: not only because he was sitting with his arms bunched across his chest like loaded springs, but also because he had turned down an offer to spar with Natasha and elected to work through several punching bags instead – something he only did when he was afraid he didn’t have enough focus to keep from hurting someone.

They were all showing the strain in their own ways. When Steve had declined Natasha’s offer to fight, she’d dragged Bruce out from his lab – where he’d been hunched over a set of equations for beta decay reactions – and taught him eight new ways to incapacitate an assailant without Hulking. Clint had been baking his way through the “cookies and bars” section of the cookbook Pepper had bought him for his birthday, and every time he finished another dozen, Thor would arrange them into smiley faces on plates and distribute them to each member of the team. Rhodey had even come over for the day. Ostensibly, he needed to go over some upgrades to the War Machine armor; but really, Tony suspected, he wanted to give Tony something to do that didn’t involve setting off semi-controlled explosions.

Finally they’d all gravitated to the common room: less because they actually hoped that watching _Ocean’s Twelve_ again was going to distract them, and more because they’d gotten used to filling tense moments with the sounds of each other’s voices.

“I’ll knock Tony out!” Clint volunteered, cracking his knuckles.

“No you won’t,” Steve said, at the same time that Tony said, “I’m in.”

“Come on, Cap!” Clint protested. “I’d be the best choice. I get knocked out all the time. I know which ways hurt the least, and which ones make the funniest stories later.”

“I could demonstrate some of the options on you right now,” Natasha offered casually.

“How about no one knocks anyone out?” Bruce suggested, rubbing his fingers across the bridge of his nose. “Today is stressful enough without a repeat of the ‘human skee-ball’ incident.”

“Do I even want to know?” Rhodey asked.

“It was the brain child of Clint, Tony’s new propulsion system, and a lot of Asgardian mead, so no – probably not,” Natasha responded.

“Did someone say Ski Balls?” Thor asked excitedly, returning from the kitchen with a second bowl of popcorn and a pizza pan grinning with ginger snaps. “Maybe we could play a round before –”

“No!” everyone chorused, and Thor nodded reluctantly, as if he saw the wisdom of their verdict.

“Well, okay,” Tony tried again, plucking at the collar of Steve’s tee-shirt, “if you won’t knock me out, maybe you could…you know…knock me out.”

He waggled his eyebrows and ran one finger suggestively down Steve’s chest.

“We could do that thing we tried last week, with the carabineers and the jump rope – or that position from last night, where you used the back of the couch to...” He illustrated with another hitch of his eyebrows. “That put me right to sleep.”

“I definitely didn’t want to know _that_ ,” Rhodey said.

“Half of those things don’t even sound like they were meant for sex,” Bruce pointed out.

“I could demonstrate some of the options on you right now,” Natasha offered, even more casually than before. Bruce choked on a handful of popcorn, and Thor had to pound him on the back to clear it.

“Trust me, I’ll definitely ‘knock you out’ later,” Steve smiled, throwing in an eyebrow raise of his own as he ran a hand through Tony’s hair, “but let’s all be together when the call comes. I’d like…it would be good to hear it as a team.”

Tony sighed and let himself be pulled back against Steve’s chest, feeling the electric current humming through his limbs lessen slightly as Steve scraped gentle circles across his scalp. Tony pulled Steve’s free hand across his body and tucked it under his own arm, listening as Natasha and Clint went back to workshopping plans to beat Ocean’s team to the Fabergé egg and Rhodey resumed explaining why Basher was clearly the real brains of the operation.

“It’s a little offensive that you’re being so reasonable about this,” Tony muttered to Steve. “This is a horrible day, and I don’t know what you have to feel so irritatingly peaceful about.”

“You,” Steve said simply. “Us. The team.”

“Because ‘we tried our best, and that’s all we can do’?” Tony asked, not quite in the mood to be talked out of his stomach-full of dread. “I wasn’t under the impression that anyone in this room was wowing their therapists with an ability to accept their personal limitations.”

"You’re probably right about that,” Steve replied, stroking the side of his thumb over Tony’s ribs. “I don’t know what it would feel like to be sure I’d done enough. But I’m sure about what you’ll do. I know how hard you’ll fight. It’s something that scares me, because no matter what happens today, the fight won’t be over. And we don’t know how much it’s going to cost us to keep going. But at the end of the day, I know this team is going to take care of each other. I don’t always trust myself, and I definitely don’t trust the world out there, but I trust that. I trust us.”

“Shit, Cap,” Clint swore. Natasha gave Steve’s foot a squeeze, and Rhodey threw a small smile Tony’s way. They’d just gotten to the part of the movie when what had looked like disaster and fracture turned out to be collaboration, and it was a little cheesy, but, then again, Tony had been experimenting with letting himself fall for things that were a little cheesy sometimes. He nestled his head onto Steve’s shoulder and took one of the ginger snaps Thor was passing around.

“All right, fine,” he said. “I guess we’ll fight again tomorrow.”


	3. The Last Door

Upon waking up, Tony became aware of three facts in the following order: (1) he was cold, (2) there was an IV line pulling at the skin of his left arm, and (3) Steve Rogers was hunched over his hospital bed looking absolutely awful.

Well, awful on the scale of Steve Rogers, Tony amended. His jawline could still give a sculptor a stroke. And the lines that flexed through his forearms still filled Tony with the kind of feeling he imagined must have made Gustav Klimt paint Emilie Flöge. But Steve’s shirt was rumpled, his eyes bloodshot, his expression slack. And as he stared into space – not so much _at_ as _directly through_ the whiteboard where the nursing staff recorded their hourly visits – Steve’s posture seemed to sag under an invisible weight. Like someone had slung a circle of solid lead across his back.

“Hey, soldier,” Tony murmured.

Steve startled, and it was a sign of how deep in his thoughts he must have been that Tony had caught him unawares.

“You’re awake,” he managed, wrapping one of his hands around Tony’s. “The doctor said you’d be out for hours, so of course you had to show him up.” His face pinched toward a smile and didn’t stick the landing.

“Hey,” Tony said, squeezing Steve’s hand, “what’s going on? I know my hair’s probably a disaster, but you’ve seen me much worse than this.”

Steve shook his head, his brows furrowing.

“Steve,” Tony prompted. “Talk to me. What’s wrong?”

“A car accident, Tony,” Steve answered finally, jaw clenching around the words. “God. All the time we spend training for the field, trying to prepare for every possible scenario, and then a car accident. We could take down half of HYDRA in a week, and still all it would take is one asshole missing a stop sign.”

He rubbed the hand not holding Tony’s across his eyes, and for the first time Tony noticed the faint tracks running down Steve’s cheek.

“It’s a pretty common way to go, Steve,” Tony said gently. “I know our lives carry some pretty strange risks, but that doesn’t mean we get to skip the everyday variety.”

“I do,” Steve retorted, his voice thick. “I mean, I don’t even know if I can – I don’t know how long I’ll have to live after –”

He broke off, and no painkiller in the world could touch what it felt like to see Steve’s last effort to hold himself together crumple.

“Hey,” Tony repeated, and this time he gave Steve’s hand a tug, using his other hand to tap the spot where his arc reactor had been years ago. “Come here.”

Steve let out a soft choking sound and collapsed forward, nestling his head onto Tony’s chest and clutching at the fabric of his hospital gown. Tony ran the tips of his fingers in small circles across Steve’s back and let him wrestle down the sobs.

Steve had been so young when he made this deal, Tony remembered – so much younger than Tony had been when he shot his way out of a cave, already on borrowed time. Steve had thought he was signing up to die for people. He couldn’t have imagined the highest cost of his bravery would be that he’d have to outlive them.

“I can’t be sorry you became who you did,” Tony whispered, tracing oblique angles across Steve’s shoulders toward the nape of his neck. “It’s the only reason I got to have you at all, and I don’t think there’s a version of me in any universe good enough to give that up. But I promise I’ll try to make it worth it for as long as I can.”

“Tony,” Steve said, raising his head and taking Tony’s face in his hands, “I would do it all over again for any time at all – for the worst hour of the worst day we’ve ever had. Please don’t think that I would trade any of it –”

“Shh, okay Rogers,” Tony smiled, covering one of Steve’s hands with his. “I believe you. And if you’re really that fond of our darkest hours, we can reenact the incident at the Secretary of State's Office as many times as you want.”

“We promised never to talk about that again,” Steve groaned, but Tony could see the corner of his lips tugging upward.

“You called the clerk at the desk a ‘narrow-minded stooge, licking the boots of a backwater bureaucracy,’” Tony pointed out mildly.

“He said our marriage license was a national embarrassment!” Steve protested. “And you’re the one who threatened to buy the building he lived in and turn it into a gay strip club.”

A real smile finally broke across Steve’s face at the memory, and Tony felt like someone had loosened a metal band strapped across his chest.

“Well, the joke’s on him, darling,” Tony said, running his thumb up and down along the edge of Steve’s hand. “Because I’m going to make sure you get every last drop out of this ‘til death do us part’ business. I swear to God. I’m going to get you thrown out of so many government offices: you’ll feel like you’re flunking the draft again.”

“I’ll go through every door you do,” Steve agreed, leaning in to press a kiss to Tony’s lips, “for as long as I can – until the very last one.”


	4. Call My Bluff

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Inspired by a prompt from @wired-heartbeats on Tumblr: "Why are we the only two people relatively good at strip poker here damn it guess I gotta lose on purpose to get this rollin huh"

“All right, chumps,” Clint said, flicking cards deftly across the table from his perch on the kitchen counter, “the little blind is a sock, and the big blind is an item of outerwear of your choice.”

Of course, since Clint hadn’t suggested they play strip poker until the team had already made a substantial dent in Bruce’s latest batch of home-brew IPAs, some of them didn’t have many choices left at this point. Bruce had managed to hold onto both socks but was otherwise down to just his boxers, a white tee shirt, and a watch. Natasha had discarded a jacket, a headband, and a boot. And Thor and Clint were both surrounded by piles of clothing, though Tony suspected they were actually stripping at a faster rate than they were losing.

Steve, on the other hand, had yet to shed a single item.

It was infuriating, really, because Tony had spent all day reviewing the World’s Most Coma-Inducing Slide Presentations ahead of the Board meeting tomorrow – a meeting for which he’d also promised Pepper that he would stay sober – and so the very least he deserved for so much good behavior was for the supersolider with whom he’d been hopelessly infatuated for the last two years to show a little skin, for Christ’s sake. The only consolation available was that Tony was playing about as well as Steve, having sacrificed only his tie and a pair of cufflinks to win a button-down shirt from Bruce on the previous hand.

Tony folded early this time around, partially because Clint was squinting one eye in a way that meant he was going to bet big, and partially because Tony wanted to watch Steve’s face as he checked the bet. Tony had learned more and more of Steve’s tells over the years: the vertical furrow between his brows that meant he was worried, the crossed arms that meant he was remembering something he couldn’t talk about. The data set grew regularly these days, filling out with the little signs that let Tony predict how Steve was going to move and what he was going to need. But still, for the life of him, Tony could not read whatever it was that flashed across Steve’s face in moments like this one, when he glanced up at Tony as he thumbed the edge of his cards. The expression came and went, leaving a sensation like a hot coal in the center of Tony’s chest.

“It’s my deal,” Steve said finally, and Tony snapped out of his reverie in time to notice that Thor had won the last hand, and Clint was now heading to the pantry to grab potato chips wearing nothing but a pair of purple boxer-briefs.

Natasha, meanwhile, was taking much longer than seemed strictly necessary to relieve herself of a pullover sweater, and Tony suddenly froze in the act of picking up his cards: because how had _Natasha_ given up a _sweater_? Tony had lost every bet he’d made with her since the days when Natalie Rushman was clearing his schedule for lunch at Carbone, and she had just abandoned her second-largest item of clothing to a pocket-nines bluff from Thor, God of Incurable Credulity? Not fucking likely.

Tony narrowed his eyes as he watched her twirl the discarded sweater in a few graceful circles with her wrist. Noticing his glare, she gave him the tiniest of smirks, her head inclining across the table. Tony followed its direction and saw that Bruce was staring openly, mouth hanging slightly ajar, cards lying untouched on the table.

Well _that_ was an interesting development.

Tony felt a slow grin spreading across his face, and he looked instinctively back toward Steve to see if he had noticed Natasha’s adaptation to the game. But when he met Steve’s gaze, the grin stuck, only halfway formed. Because Steve was staring directly at him, his jaw and brow set into hard lines that (as Tony had learned through painful experience) were Steve’s tell for, “wearing a parachute would only slow me down.”

Steve dealt the river card without even glancing at it.

“I’d like to raise the bet,” he said. “Nothing shy of two yards of fabric.”

“A rousing challenge!” Thor yelled, slapping his cards down on the table. “I would hate to give way under any less brave an assault.”

“I’m out too,” Natasha smiled. “I don’t think I have the kind of action this round calls for.”

Tony twirled his cards between his thumb and index finger, doing his best to pass off the sudden firing of his nerves as indecision over his hand. Steve had leaned back in his chair, but his eyes hadn’t left Tony’s, and whatever look Tony had caught a glimpse of earlier was fixed in place now, making Tony feel vaguely like the arc reactor was overheating.

“I’ll call,” Tony said, drumming his fingertips on the table. Steve finally broke eye contact to look down at the movement, and Tony watched in disbelief as his jaw somehow set even further: like concrete getting pressed into granite.

“I’m uhh – I’m out I think? Yeah, I’m going to fold,” Bruce said.

“Probably the right choice, Banner,” Clint nodded sagely, now back from the kitchen and tossing barbecue chips to himself in the air.

“Okay boys, show us the goods,” Natasha demanded.

“Full house,” Tony announced, laying down a king and a queen.

“Well, you’ve got me there, Tony,” Steve replied. Slowly and deliberately, he turned over his cards to reveal a king and a ten.

A pair of kings? But that was a garbage hand. That meant that Steve –

Steve was reaching down and peeling off his undershirt and sweater in one smooth motion.

“Bad luck, I guess,” he said. And then he gave a shrug that sent an absolutely criminal ripple of movement across his bare chest.

Oh. _Oh:_ that smug, chiseled bastard.

“Deal the cards, Nat,” Tony said, taking care to wet the tips of his fingers with his tongue before he plucked his off the table.

One hand later, Tony was slipping the waist of his pants slowly over his hips. Two hands later, Steve was using more muscles to remove a pair of socks than Tony had known the human body to contain. When Tony retaliated by rolling up his sleeves before peeling off his own socks, Steve ripped his belt off with a speed that made Tony feel like the armor had taken a blow to the head. By the time Tony shimmied his way out of his dress shirt, Bruce had to pretend to bump into the table before Tony remembered there were other people in the room.

“I’m going to head to bed,” Steve said abruptly, tearing his eyes away from Tony’s forearms as he stood up. “Gotta know when your luck has turned.”

“Oh someone’s getting lucky, for sure,” Clint smirked, and then he ducked — almost in time to avoid a projectile potato chip from Natasha.

“Yeah, so I’m just going to…go be over there now,” Tony said, in what he felt was an impressive display of self-possession for someone staring at the retreating ass of Steve Rogers.

“Don’t say I never did anything nice for you, Tony,” Natasha called after him as he scurried out of the room.

He barely made it around the corner and into the hallway before he was being swung around and held against the wall, one of Steve’s hands planted firmly against his chest.

“Took you long enough to get out of that shirt,” Steve growled.

“I could have gotten to the shirt faster if _someone_ weren’t an unrepentant _cheater_ who was dealing from the bottom of the deck – _again_ ,” Tony shot back, gripping the loops of Steve’s jeans and pulling their hips together.

“I must have misread your signals then, because I was pretty sure you were interested in what I might do from the bottom,” Steve whispered, his lips teasingly close.

“God, Rogers,” Tony groaned, “how can you be so corny and so hot at the same time? It drives me completely nuts.”

“It does?” Steve asked, the pressure against Tony’s chest lightening as Steve pulled back to search Tony’s face.

“No, Steve,” Tony said patiently, “I just wriggled my hips in front of _Clint Fucking Barton_ because you fill me with incredibly casual, ordinary thoughts. Of course you drive me nuts, you idiot. I’ve been crazy about you for years.”

And that was probably more of a revelation than a race to lose at strip poker merited, but Tony couldn’t regret it, because a totally new expression had bloomed over Steve’s face. As Steve leaned down and pressed their foreheads together, one finger tracing the line of Tony’s jaw, Tony tried to memorize it. Tell: the smile that meant Steve Rogers was happy.


	5. A Very Small Grease Fire (and Other Human Disasters)

The Avengers didn’t have the best track record with Thanksgiving. The first time the dinner had ended in disaster, it had been Steve’s fault. One rainy fall Sunday, just months after the Battle of New York, Steve had been picking at a bowl of mint-chip ice cream, feeling tired of getting looks of sympathy about the holidays and absolutely exhausted by feeling sorry for himself. If Bruce and Clint hadn’t chosen that particular afternoon to ask him whether there was anything special he wanted for Thanksgiving – raising the question with just enough gentleness to make Steve’s jaw tighten – he probably would have said, “I’m a sweet potatoes guy” and left it at that.

Instead, Steve had been seized by a spirit of mischief. Putting on his most morose poker face, he had proceeded to invent a series of Depression-era dishes, from “Hoover Rolls” to “Poor Man’s Potatoes,” the recipes for which he concocted out of the blandest ingredients he could imagine. By the time he was in the process of describing his _third_ Crisco-based dessert, Steve was sure he had gone far enough to reveal the joke; but Bruce and Clint had continued nodding encouragingly and jotting down notes.

The results had been borderline inedible. And even though the sight of Tony doubled over with laughter when Steve finally fessed up had thawed out a part of his heart he hadn’t even known was still on ice, the experience of eating a holiday dinner in which half the dishes tasted like over-starched socks forced even Steve to admit that the prank had been a bit of a Pyrrhic victory.

The second time…well, Steve would have said the second time was his fault too – though he supposed the rest of the team would blame the extremists who tried to kidnap the governor. Clint had just started basting the turkey when the “Assemble” alarm went off, and the team had to pile in the Quinjet to deal with a hostage situation at the capitol. It should have been an easy job – in and out with plenty of time to take the butter for the piecrust out of the freezer – but then one of the extremists had pulled the pin on a grenade just yards away from a state senator’s eight-year-old son, and four hours later Steve was waking up in the burn unit at Walter Reed hospital with the anguished sound of someone shouting his name still ringing in his ears.

“You fucking idiot,” the same voice had greeted him, and Steve looked up to see Tony sitting by his bed, the lines around his eyes drawn tight over a surgical mask. “You’re supposed to be a tactical genius, and you haven’t learned a single new method for containing explosives since basic training in 1943? I’m going to equip your suit with goddamn ballistic plates.”

“Tony,” Steve managed, feeling a halo of pain radiate up his scalp. “Are you okay? Was anyone hurt?”

Steve thought he saw something mist across Tony’s eyes, but he couldn’t be sure. The more fully he became aware of his body, the more he noticed the pull of his skin cells contracting in uneven loops around the burns on his torso, and it was taking a considerable amount of energy to keep Tony’s face in focus.

“Everybody’s fine but you, Steve,” Tony assured him. “And the doctors said you should be able to move to the general floor in a few hours. So shut those baby blues and let the serum do its job, because there’s a whole team of keyed-up superheroes waiting to see you, and they’re emptying the hospital vending machines fast enough to cause a run on the Frito-Lay factory.”

Steve had drifted in and out of consciousness for a while after that, finally waking up long enough to eat a holiday dinner of contraband take-out, which Natasha had smuggled into the hospital using only Thor’s tendency to knock over delicate instruments and Bruce’s oversized jacket.

“When you sign up to be an Avenger, no one warns you about doing overtime as a falafel mule,” Bruce had mused, leaning back to let Natasha steal a fry off his plate.

“I still think we could have gotten that eighth kebab if you’d been willing to consider pant legs as additional real estate,” she told him.

"You should all be eating stuffing and pumpkin pie,” Steve grimaced. “I’m sorry you’re stuck here on Thanksgiving.”

“Listen, Cap,” Clint replied, waving a dolma at him, “if you’re going to apologize for anything, apologize for the purgatory potatoes you tricked me into making last year. At least this year we have food that doesn’t have the texture of fast-drying cement.”

“Those tubers had truly been abandoned by the gods,” Thor agreed solemnly. “But I maintain that the Big Band Banana Pie was actually quite delicious.”

“Just don’t make the third-degree burns and hypovolemic shock a holiday habit, Rogers,” Tony put in. “Some of us are trying to watch our blood pressure.”

Tony had leaned over to adjust the settings on Steve’s bed as he spoke, and by the time he finished, a dull tugging sensation across Steve’s chest had loosened – the pain subsiding almost before Steve could register that it had been bothering him.

So that was why, after two years of throwing wrenches in the Avengers’ Thanksgiving plans, Steve was determined to make sure that year three went off without a hitch. He’d drawn up an elaborate plan for maximizing the utility of the Tower kitchen’s two ovens and seven burners and for optimizing the team’s various culinary skills. The operatives had been briefed the night before, and by 10:30 AM on Thursday, Steve was fluting a pie crust, Bruce was stripping fresh thyme leaves into an herb blend, Clint was whipping up a roux for the mushroom gravy, Thor was mashing potatoes and parsnips in an industrial-strength metal vat, and Natasha was dicing carrots and celery with a speed and precision that felt vaguely unsettling.

After checking the team’s progress against his itinerary, Steve turned to the next task on his own list: bringing Tony Stark his emergency coffee. Bruce had just made a second pot, and Steve poured some into the largest cup he could find: a purple novelty mug, featuring a drawing of the Hulk and the words “You Wouldn’t Like Me Without My Coffee.” He paused to tuck a few biscuits into a napkin (Tony’s relief at sighting fresh coffee sometimes opened up a narrow window during which Steve could feed him breakfast without being noticed), and headed down to the lab.

He found Tony standing with both arms braced against his worktable, designs for what looked like the paneling of Steve’s uniform projected in front of him. Steve cleared his throat, and Tony whirled around, the slump of his shoulders morphing into a graceful lounge by the time he was facing Steve.

“I was just about to come up,” he said. “I have a few finishing touches left here and then I’m all yours, Cap. Give me everything that can survive being the tiniest bit overcooked.”

Steve walked over to put Tony’s coffee on the table and then felt his breath catch in his throat when Tony reached out and took the mug from his hand instead.

“There’s no need,” Steve responded to cover his reaction, flexing the hand that had brushed Tony’s as he let it fall back to his side. “We’ve got the schedule covered for now. I was actually hoping I could talk you into a snack break.”

He waved the napkin of biscuits experimentally.

“Are you cutting me from the Thanksgiving roster, Rogers?” Tony asked. “Just because _one time_ I set a _very small_ grease fire – which I contained almost immediately, by the way.”

“The vase I broke when I sprinted into the kitchen would beg to differ,” Steve smiled. “But it’s not that. I just wanted to do this for you: a big dinner and sitting down with family.”

“For me?” Tony blinked at him. “Why?”

Steve started to cross his arms across his chest before realizing that he would risk crushing the biscuits. He settled for clasping his wrist with his free hand instead, widening his stance slightly and taking a deep breath. Come on, Rogers. Take it on the chin.

“Because I wanted to tell you that I woke up in this century alone,” he said, “and that you were the first person stubborn enough to make sure I wouldn’t stay that way. Now I wake up to a kitchen full of people who tease me about my lists but who know why I need them – who will eat dinner rolls that taste like soggy chalk just to make me feel at home.” He paused. “People who stay by my side for eight straight hours at the hospital.”

Steve looked up and caught Tony’s eyes, his heart rate picking up speed as memories of those same eyes flashed through his mind in quick succession: tearing up with laughter over a plate of cornstarched bananas, pinched with fear over a surgical mask, narrowed in concentration over the remote control for an adjustable bed.

“Romanov has an awfully big mouth for a spy,” Tony said with a rueful smile.

“I think it was a tactical leak,” Steve acknowledged, “to motivate her mark. She knew I needed a push. Because I’ve messed up the past two years, and I needed to tell you: pretty much everything I’m thankful for in my new life is here because of you.”

Tony was staring at him, his eyes darting quickly across Steve’s face as if JARVIS were scanning it for data. Steve held up under the silent scrutiny as long as he could before letting out an explosive breath.

“Anyway, sorry to interrupt you,” he said quickly. “You’ve got work to do, and I’ve got to go make sure everything’s on track upstairs. I’ll uh – I’ll have Bruce come get you when dinner’s ready.”

He started to make an about face toward the door, but Tony caught his arm and held him in place.

“Give a guy a goddamn minute, Steve,” he said softly. “I’m having to do a major cognitive reboot over here. It takes a while for the operating system to come back online. Just…sit down? Let me show you the new flame retardants I’m adding to your uniform.”

Steve complied. And as he watched Tony run through the specs, gulping coffee and nibbling absently at the biscuits, he realized that he knew what Tony was saying even before Tony finally spoke the words: “I’m thankful every time you wake up.”


	6. Deck the Halls

“Okay,” Tony said, “I am willing to admit that putting repulsors on the Iron Man ornaments was not my best idea.”

He paused to duck as a pillow, half a molasses crinkle, and what looked suspiciously like a tranquilizer dart flew at him from three different locations in the Avengers common room.

“But I maintain,” he continued from behind the couch, “that the underlying principle of the design is both technologically sound and aesthetically adorable. Also, refs, can I get a rule check on ‘no using knock-out techniques on your teammates’?”

“If I wanted you knocked out, you’d be dreaming of sugar plums right now,” Natasha called out from somewhere behind a makeshift barricade of packages and wrapping-paper rolls. One of the tiny Iron Men buzzed over her head, sending a barrage of dime-sized repulsor blasts at a Rudolph gift bag, and Natasha shot the ornament out of the air with her Widow’s Bites.

“Also, calling in the refs is a pretty bold move,” Bruce added, “considering that the miniature murder bots guarding our Christmas tree are in flagrant violation of rules ten through fifteen.”

Bruce’s voice was slightly distorted by the walls of his blanket fort, which Steve had suggested building as an anti-Hulking measure when the first wave of ornaments flew off their branches and into attack formation. So far the strategy had proved successful, with only one close call after Thor almost collided with the fort during an enthusiastic mid-air tackle.

“Remind me never to do holiday dinners with you guys again,” Rhodey groaned. He was crouched next to Tony behind the couch opposite Steve’s, and Steve could hear the faint whir of the War Machine gauntlet as he scanned the room. “I could be falling asleep on my couch to the Vince Guaraldi Trio, and instead I’m hiding from an army of weaponized Christmas figurines.”

“When you’re subpoenaed for the inevitable senate hearing about this, just remember: it was all Steve’s fault,” Tony advised.

“Thanks, sweetheart,” Steve replied, adding an eye roll that he knew Tony would hear in his voice.

It was true that Steve had been the one to suggest that they make their own decorations for the Tower this year. But it was also true that Steve’s contribution (a hand-drawn series of family holiday cards to hang on the fridge) had been the only one that hadn’t tended to produce chaos. Thor and Natasha’s idea to braid garlands had started out innocently enough. But then they’d decided to add “motivational mead” to the creative process. Ten hours later, they’d produced so many strings of spruce, holly, and taffeta that the garlands had to be looped around every available surface, twisting around lamps and chair legs until the common room looked like it was being slowly strangled to death by a festive boa constrictor. Bruce – in a complete failure to learn from the previous Halloween’s Saltwater Taffy Incident – had concocted a spiced eggnog so addictively good that each new batch he made disappeared almost immediately – setting off a cycle of recrimination and dairy-based hoarding. And Clint had stayed true to form by making an extremely explicit, themed pin-up calendar of himself, which had been quickly banned from all common areas by a 4-2 vote (“I think these poses are courageous,” Thor had explained, “considering your very small human sizes”).

“Blame is assigned by the survivors, Stark,” Natasha said evenly. Her face darted into view at one end of her barricade, next to a box wrapped in “Hulk Smash!” paper. “And if we don’t get these ornaments contained before Bruce’s chocolate pecan pie has to come out of the oven, I can’t guarantee that anyone in this room will qualify.”

“How many left, JARVIS?” Tony asked.

“Just three, sir,” the crisp voice replied. “And my sensors indicate they are all locked in a standoff with the large stuffed hedgehog on the lower floor.”

“Do I have to ask?” Rhodey muttered.

“It’s for Pepper,” Tony explained, “a running gag: she thinks it’s hilarious.”

“We should set a trap to draw out the remaining ornaments,” Steve decided. “I want eyes on the perimeter – where the hell _is_ Clint anyway?”

As if on cue, a grappling arrow shot across the room and latched onto the side of a container of eggnog. The metal wire attached to the hook pulled taut and then retracted with a sharp twang, yanking the eggnog over their heads and back into the air vent.

“You have a problem, man!” Rhodey yelled after Clint’s feet as they slithered away from the opening in the ducts. “Get help!”

“Ah that gives me an idea!” Thor exclaimed. He popped his head up from behind the kitchen counter, where he had apparently been braiding one of the garlands into his hair. “The tiny Iron Soldiers seem determined to guard the spirit of the holidays. Perhaps we can use that to our advantage.”

“Right,” Tony agreed, “cover me.”

He stood up and strode toward the Christmas tree, gauntlet charging.

“Come out, my tiny, murderous robot sons,” Tony called, “or I’m going to turn your favorite tree into a pile of toothpicks.”

“Did you actually equip them with audio sensors? Or are you just grandstanding?” Rhodey asked.

“Kind of stepping on my moment here, Gumdrop,” Tony replied.

And whether it was because the ornaments had somehow sensed a threat to the tree or because they had successfully subdued all the stuffed animals in the vicinity, Steve’s ears suddenly picked up the low whine that meant hostile décor was incoming. As Tony held his position, Steve saw Natasha, Rhodey, and Thor leap out from cover and take aim at the three diminutive Iron Men that were shooting toward their creator’s head.

“Tony!” Steve yelled, and Tony let out a small yelp of surprise as Steve tackled him sideways onto the couch. Steve curled his body protectively around Tony’s, and he threw up his shield just in time to shelter them from the disintegrated ornaments, which fell like a shower of harmless glitter into a halo around their heads.

Steve cleared his throat, feeling his cheeks flush slightly as a chunk of armor the size of a pea pattered onto the couch next to them with a barely audible fizzle.

“My hero,” Tony smirked.

“A bit overdramatic, Rogers,” Thor observed.

“Ooooooh, Captain America!” Clint called in a high-pitched voice from a nearby vent. “You’re so dreamy. Will you sign my chest?”

A chorus of boos and a smattering of tossed cookies followed Clint’s laughing retreat back through the ducts.

“So I’m thinking the Mark II ornaments should come with a fail-safe button,” Tony mused, looking up at Steve with his head still resting in the crook of Steve’s arm.

“Tony,” Steve sighed.

“What?” Tony asked with exaggerated innocence. “I have models for the whole team. There’s even a little Cap ornament with magnets for the hug and fly.”

Steve chewed his bottom lip.

“Are you trying not to smile?” Tony asked.

“I’m trying to contain my disapproval,” Steve replied.

“You’re trying not to smile,” Tony confirmed. “Let it out, Steve. I’m objectively delightful.”

“You’re objectively a threat to national security,” Steve retorted.

“Yeah, and you love it,” Tony nodded. “That’s like…your number one turn on.”

Steve finally allowed a smile to spread across his face. In the part of his mind that was always scanning his periphery, he was aware of Natasha helping Bruce out of his blanket fort and picking a piece of lint out of his hair – her hand lingering a little longer than necessary as Bruce assured her he had a backup pie in the fridge. Rhodey and Thor were loudly concocting plans to smoke Clint out (and pointedly ignoring Clint’s own contributions from the vent above them). And in the center, as always, was Tony, who was grinning victoriously as he took in Steve’s expression.

“You’re right,” Steve told him. “I do love you.”

Tony's smile froze in momentary surprise and then softened.

“This is how you want to say that for the first time?” he asked teasingly, his hands coming up to brush at Steve’s sides just above the hem of his jeans. “On the couch, surrounded by our catcalling friends and the scorched remains of the homicidal holiday ornaments I created?”

“Yep,” Steve answered, leaning down to kiss Tony’s forehead. “I love that you make messes,” a kiss on the right cheek, “I love that you invite messes to move in,” a kiss on the left cheek, “I love that since I met you, you’ve made every mess of mine your mess too,” a final kiss – as gentle as Steve could make it – on Tony’s lips. “I love you, Tony.”

He pulled back so he could look into Tony’s eyes and watch the rapid play of emotion across his face – always too fast to track.

“I love you too, you big sap,” Tony replied, and as the team whooped and set off a round of Christmas crackers, he pulled Steve back down by the front of his Iron Man sweater.


	7. Old Acquaintance

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The last chapter of the collection is here! Thank you to everyone who has read these short stories here and on Tumblr. I am wishing us all more justice and more peace in the new year to come.

The mission had gone wrong from the start: bad intel, a junior HYDRA agent who was far too twitchy with self-destruct buttons, and the first Code Green in months. After picking up the pieces of their weapons and uniforms, the team had flown back to the Tower in near silence, shuffled through a cursory medical check, and collapsed across the furniture in the common room. It had been a solid fifteen minutes before Clint had flopped over and pawed at the remote long enough to turn on “New Year’s Rockin’ Eve,” and another twenty minutes before Steve heaved himself off the couch to raid the kitchen for snacks.

“Nmph,” Tony protested as Steve slipped a pillow under Tony’s head in place of his lap.

“You’ll thank me when you have ice cream,” Steve assured him, but his fingers lingered as they brushed Tony’s hair away from the bandage on his temple, throat tightening with the effort of surrendering contact.

“Just bring the cartons,” Natasha suggested, not bothering to lift her head from where it was resting on Bruce’s shoulder. She’d taken a hard fall right before the Code Green, and Steve wasn’t sure Bruce even realized he’d been tracing fractal patterns across her arm ever since she’d flopped down next to him.

“Bring the fancy crackers!” Clint yelled, his voice muffled by the cushion he’d dragged off the couch and face-planted into. “No wait!” He lifted his head, revealing the beginnings of an impressive shiner over his left eye. “Make tater tots!”

“Anything that involves preheating is self-serve,” Steve shot back as he rifled through the cupboards for popcorn and chips.

“Aww man,” Clint sighed, “but tots and shots.”

“I will make the tiny potatoes,” Thor offered magnanimously, rising from the recliner fast enough that it gave a creak of surprise. He looked by far the least battered of any of them, despite having taken a header from a load-bearing wall when the bomb had detonated. “They are an excellent vehicle for ketchup.”

Steve distributed his armload of snacks before returning to his spot on the couch, readjusting his arms as Tony sat up to claim a spoon and a carton of rocky road. The anxious claws that had been sinking their way into Steve’s chest while he was out of the room retracted slightly as Tony leaned back against him, and for a few minutes he let himself bury his face in Tony’s hair and breathe. With each inhale, the scent of coconut and jasmine from Tony’s shampoo became stronger. With each exhale, the memory of the Iron Man armor bent over a tangle of explosives – faceplate lifting as Tony shouted at him to run – faded just a little further into the background.

“Oh it’s my song!” Clint called out.

A Top-40 hit Steve vaguely recognized had started playing on the television, which was showing cell-phone videos of people dancing in their bedrooms and living rooms. Clint heaved himself to his feet, wobbling only briefly on the left ankle he’d twisted jumping out of a window, and started shaking his hips to the music.

“Start the new year as you mean to continue!” he proclaimed.

“Covered in crab dip and bomb residue?” Tony asked.

“Etching haunting, ineffaceable images into our brains?” Bruce added.

“Dancing it out with a bunch of assholes!” Clint replied, extending a hand to Natasha, who rolled her eyes but joined him nonetheless. She touched one finger gingerly to the edge of Clint’s black eye and then took his hand to set him up for a twirl.

“In Asgard, one year lasts 7,000 Midgardian days,” Thor declared, now back from the kitchen and dipping three tater tots meditatively into a mixing bowl of ketchup, “and we celebrate the dawning of a new age by tapping a barrel of Ymir’s mead and bathing together in the blood of a newly conquered enemy.”

“I swear you make half of this shit up,” Tony said, grinning when Thor gave him a slow wink in reply.

“Hey look,” Bruce announced as the camera feed switched back to Times Square, “we made it.”

The team chanted along with the countdown, Clint gathering a handful of tater tots for a ketchup toast with Thor and Natasha dancing her way over to plant kisses on Tony’s cheek and Steve’s forehead before sliding back in next to Bruce.

As they neared the end of the count, Steve looked over at Tony and felt his breath catch at the raw expression in his eyes. He brought his hands up instinctively to cup Tony’s face, and Tony tangled his fingers into Steve’s hair, pulling him into a kiss that was as fierce a promise as any they’d made during a year’s worth of firefights and hospital recovery rooms. When they came up for air, Steve left his forehead pressed gently to Tony’s, relaxing into the feeling of Tony sweeping his fingers across the nape of Steve’s neck.

“Starting the year as we mean to continue,” Steve murmured.

“Surviving?” Tony asked, a small smile tugging at his lips.

“Surviving together.”


End file.
